What is true physical beauty?

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) in his Essays, Civil and Moral put it like this: "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion"

It seems like to be beautiful the thing or person must stand out; be uncommon or different from the majority.

So beauty stands out. It is "strange". But most people do not really seem to really want to stand out. They want to be like others to be accepted by their peers. Dress like each other. Act like each other.

Maybe it is biological. I read about symmetry in faces. This would seem to suggest that it is not about "strangeness". But then true beauty would be common.

What Girls Said 1

beauty is just an unfair phenomenon tbh ! it's causing so many people to suffer and be insecure and self conscious while others bully them for not having what they have. I think we should all be beautiful so it becomes a fair game. oh dreams! :)

well that "strangeness" that he was referring to is the uniqueness that sticks out to you personally. beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so there are people that are going to stick out to you and might even be weird but you like them for some reason. If your looking for some universal definition of beauty . it doesn't exist, its all subjective. That strange feeling is our feeling of closeness and bonding with that person. Its more than just physical appearance.

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Anonymous

Not exactly. What I get from that quote is something that matches more with the scientific definition of beauty when referring to people. It does have to do with certain proportions, but it's not about what's the most uncommon.

In the more general sense of beautiful things, that's more about art and aesthetics.